


The Vulcan and the Ferengi

by DG_Fletcher



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: F/M, Ferengi culture, Internalized Misogyny, Pon Farr, Slave Trade, Vulcan Biology, Vulcan Culture, culture clash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-29 14:20:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19402081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DG_Fletcher/pseuds/DG_Fletcher
Summary: Ferengi Cultural Misogyny meets Vulcan Pon Farr Biology. :





	The Vulcan and the Ferengi

The haze and pain and irresistible compulsion of Savar's Pon Farr dropped away to mild itching, mildly thirsty, wondering why the floor was on an angle, and ducking out of the way of eerie greenish alien sunlight blasting into his face through a gaping ragged hole in the bulwark of the Lurian Vessel Cupaap.

"Did I displease you," said a woman's voice under him, more a flat recitation than a question. 

Looking directly toward the voice got another faceful of eerie green sunlight; ducking under it, he was a foot away from an orange Ferengi woman's face. 

She sighed, rolled her eyes and reached for his head with her thin fragile hand, staring off at nothing, with the body language of "goin' through the motions". 

Savar darted back to a standing position and whacked the back of his head on a long steel bar at the wrong angle. The ship was a total wreck, with a puddle of rancid smelling water on the low part of the ship that wasn't supposed to be a low part, it was supposed to be a flat walkway, and that over there under the smashed dashboard is probably a corpse. 

"Did I...?" he wanted to throw up for more than one reason. "While I was--? are you--? Did I..." 

Savar couldn't finish his sentences, juggling between disgust, terrified for his wife T'Bay's health, horrified at himself and his wild Pon Farr Instincts--and the Ferengi woman's attitude was Not Helping. 

She was lying on rubble under the big broken gap in the Cupaap, completely naked except for a sort of half-earring half-hat object on her head, watching him with an unreadable mix of emotions flicking across her face. Exasperation and confusion were the top two active emotions. World-weary was the top stable emotion. 

Her pelvis made an odd gurgly sound, and the exasperation took on a shimmer of repressed fear. Looking anywhere but his face, "Can I... pee?" she asked, actually asking, not reciting, but the tone of expecting to be mocked or told -no-.

Savar's head throbbed. Standing on the tilted floor was dizzying in a way that was much less painful to focus on than the current situation--I think I raped a Ferengi--and the "yes" came out in a squeak. 

She darted up, avoiding -him- more than avoiding the rubble and sharp bits of the ship and the nasty puddle on the floor, although that got a glance down at it, and then a glance out to wherever that gaping hole in the Cupaap led that turned into much more than a glance. A stare for a full minute, and Savar was still too stunned to move.

"We're on a hill," she said, and squatted down and peed -right there- in the puddle. 

Savar wanted to throw up again. 

Looking -down- and out the hole above where he'd rap-, er, just been recently, the eerie greenish light wasn't in his face. Most of the scraggly plants were about the height he was, with a sickening neon bluish tinge to the leaves, and 4 little birds each the size of his thumb were staring at him or the Cupaap or both. 

Looking off on the other side where she was--they weren't on a hill, they were on a cliff. White, choppy, broken rocks freshly cracked from where the Cupaap had struck, and it was a good 40 meter drop down to a sweeping rocky terrain and a shimmering lake far off in the distance. 

What Savar wanted to do was curl up in a little ball and scream for awhile. I raped you HOW ARE YOU OKAY WITH THIS how are you not FREAKING THE FUCK OUT? -I- am. 

Let's look at this logically. 

What does Ferengi psychological shock look like? 

She's not freaking out about the rape, (I am! Still am!), she's not freaking out about her clothes being ruined and she's completely naked, she's not freaking out about being on top of a jagged 40 meter cliff. I am aware that the Ferengi male response to ACUTE stress could be termed a "squeak" but I have no idea what Ferengi of any gender are like under sustained non-painful stress. 

I feel horribly dirty, I hope T'Bay's needs are being tended to. I miss you, I need you, logic or no logic, I love you T'Bay in our own private way. If you're hurting, if you're on Pon Farr without me... I don't want you to die of it. Please be okay when I get out of this. The past 18 months have been a nightmare. I've been telling Commander Xian I needed to be where you were for our shared Pon Farr every month -for eighteen months- and we've been one pirate attack/broken engine/shipwide virus...

...we were cutting it close enough I hired a Lurian Transport just to make sure I would be where you are, T'Bay. 

And now we're far apart and I've raped a Ferengi whose nonchalance is FREAKING ME THE FUCK OUT. 

Where are you T'Bay? Where are -we-? 

Greenish sun. 

Greenish sun? 

I have no idea what route the Lurian took, I WAS ON LOCKDOWN SO I WOULDN'T ATTACK ANYONE and...rape a Ferengi. 

how did i even

Logically logically logically LOGICALLY CALM DOWN AND THINK LOGICALLY

LOGICALLY 

Nope not thinking logically, still freaking out 

"May I, erm, poop, Master?" the Ferengi woman asked, every word coming out like she wasn't sure if he'd fly off the handle on the mention of "May I", "Master", or "Poop".

Savar gulped, looked at her scrawny bony BARE feet standing in the grimy puddle, I don't even know what that's a puddle OF given our location outside, and gulped again. 

Master?! 

what color is Lurian blood?

"Let's, howbout we, do you have shoes? It's--" Savar peeked out the makeshift window on the safer side of the ship and the birds, now far more than 4 of them, all chittered like crazy, but the ground looked more rocky and barren as opposed to thorny or -dangerous-. Vulcan terrain like that sometimes had venomous creatures. 

"--probably safer and cleaner if we defecate and -reside-, stand, be, exist, over there."

"Yes Master." 

"I'm..." Savar started, and then with a wave of disgust sickening enough he nearly fell over, he realized he had no idea if her culture had that as a --you are a slave I am actually your MASTER-- or if this was more like "Yes sir"... and also the odd terrible thought "If I tell you I'm -not-, will you then listen to me at all for anything like 'please gather fire wood?'" I don't have enough cultural context to say yes or no, we're alone on an alien planet, the birds are very chirrupy out there--

I can't believe I raped you although all the logical evidence points to it

\--I'm going to leave that as a title until it's evening, assuming this place HAS evening, and when we're calm and collected and -I- am in a better place mentally, we can discuss definitions. 

Till then... 

"What happened to your shoes?" he asked her. 

She gave him a long look that sort of translated to disgust with a side order of -anger-. 

Savar had no idea what was going on. 

Then she had an idea and went over to the dashboard where their poor little Lurian captain was smashed and straight up -took her shoes-. 

"Acceptable?" the question came out as practically a repressed hiss. 

Savar gulped again. If it had been anyone else in the Universe it felt like, he would have asked if she were okay, if she wanted to switch shoes with him, Lurians didn't exactly have small feet. 

Given the bafflement that was this situation though, "Sure?" Savar pushed his voice down so it didn't come out as a full on squeak. 

The door out of the Cupaap was thankfully accessible and existed out to nothing but tiny birds staring at them, choppy trees, choppier weeds, and all of them an icky eerie bluish to pick up the icky eerie greenish light. 

The sun did seem to be -moving-, enough that nightfall could be guesstimated at being around 4 hours away, and the next 4 hours were filled with setting up a working camp, finding out the hard way that the slightly purplish trees were toxic when burned, using half the remaining first aid kit surviving the purple wood; everything ELSE burned just fine, and assessing the crash. 

Her name was Bacall, which she spat out like it annoyed her.

Whatever happened to the Cupaap, Savar's theories were gearing more toward surprise asteroid or pirates, oh the pirates, so many pirates back where he had been, it was a common problem in this sector of space when the Ferengi woman folded her STILL NAKED arms and looked at the front of the smashed shuttle. 

"I knew it was too good to be true," Bacall said. 

"What was?" 

"Feeeemales driving safely." She dragged out the vowel, turning it into a slur. 

Savar sat down on a rock wondering what the hell kind of culture he was up against. 

Nightfall came, food was foilwrapped rations, light was a beacon from the ship because there was no way Savar was going to fight purple wood blisters again in the dark. 

Bacall took both of them, ripped one open with her teeth, gave him a strange, calculating-but-angerless glance, took a bite out of it, chewed it, and then WALKED OVER AND TRIED TO BLOP IT INTO HIS MOUTH. 

Savar jumped up from where he was and hit a tree again in the same place he'd hit the iron bar earlier. Blinking through flickering white flashes, "WHAT. are. you. even..."

He didn't finish the sentence, throwing up instead. 

"Chewing?" she said flatly, like it was obvious. 

Staying FAR away from her, Savar looked around, trying to avoid hitting any other tree branches with his head. 

i raped you

you don't care

you just tried to...

...i don't even know what you just tried to do 

too weird

too illogical

She stood there by the light beacon, a glittering food pack in each hand, wearing nothing but the poor Lurian's boots, looking at him like she was equally weirded out. 

"I think we are off to the wrong start," he said, feeling like that was the biggest understatement in the world. "Whatever happened back there, I was under a severe medical condition, --I apologize-- A LOT."

She tilted her head like an eyebrowless raised eyebrow. 

"Do you forgive me?" he asked, and then worried it was WAY too soon to ask that. He certainly didn't forgive himself. 

She blinked in the dark, shrinking in on herself as if she was suddenly -in- her body instead of just sort of wearing it, existing elsewhere in her mind. She put the food packs down and stared everywhere but at him for a very long time. 

Looking at him across the beacon, in a tone of voice that was wildly different from every single other recited or mirrored thing she'd said since they met, "What even are you?" she asked. 

"Vulcan??" Savar said. 

"How do you treat your feeemales?" It wasn't quite so dragged out this time. 

"I don't have, we don't have... half the species -is- female, yes, but..." he wanted to be on Deep Space Five where T'Bay was so hard it hurt. "What kind of question is that?!" 

Bacall snapped back to her recitive-disconnected mode. "Sorry Master."

"Er, not like that, I meant..." Savar mentally thumbed through classes on how to talk to non-Vulcans and nothing useful came up. 

She flicked a look at him, halfway between staying in a recited, default mode, and half seeming to want something "more". 

"I don't have frame of reference to understand your culture," Savar said. "I have no intention to hurt you, I had no intention of hurting you back on the Cupaap. If someone did that to me, I would expect them to be angry, livid, -mad- at me. What I did was -wrong- but, not but. There is no But. What I did was -wrong- and I can promise with a certainty that a medical fit like that will not happen for another seven years--"

She seemed to like that idea. Seemed to. Half that and half disbelief. 

"--by which time --I would like to be with my WIFE and not imposing anything on you AT ALL--. That was all -very much- deeply an accident, and I had no desire to force you to do anything against your will."

"What -are- you?" she said again, back in the warm, genuine voice. 

Savar squelched the desire to say "CIVILIZED!" and instead said, "While Vulcan -has- a strong..." don't say ethical don't say ethical don't say ethical "...equality? culture, none of the actions and interactions that I've had with you bear any resemblance to any other culture I've encountered." 

As he said it, thoughts of various pre-warp cultures with strict gender rules floated in his mind, but they were all --pre warp--. 

Bacall laughed, "No one else is..." the laugh faded. "No way." 

How did you guys get into space? Savar wondered. What he said instead was "I don't know what your culture expects of you, I don't have any frame of reference, -I- am extremely sorry for what happened. What would make it up to you?" 

Bacall stared off at nothing for a very long time. "Long ago, there was a rule, 50 slips of..." she looked at him, "Strips maybe?? 50 strips of latinum." 

Bacall was bad enough at lying that Savar a Vulcan caught it anyway, but whatever the difference between slips and strips of latinum were, he sort of understood them coming in from a culture over there. He'd certainly HEARD of latinum, but it was more a ""south"" side of the Federation and his work was on the ""north"" side. 

Also, if he could figure out how to acquire 50 strips of latinum, his guilt was certainly that -size-. 

"Not that it matters," Bacall said. "They'd take it when I got home anyway." 

"Do you -want- to go home?" 

"No." Bacall said. "Maybe. Not really. There's not much to go home -to- but I don't have anywhere else to go. Brotey tried to buy me once." 

Ohey there's the Orion Syndicate. They're gender differentiated, but that was not the same thing. Orion "Slave" Girls could intentionally use pheromones to induce things. Freedom was not a non-concept, just a bit of a skewy one. 

Bacall seemed to be genuinely -enslaved-. 

"I could.. there's..." 

"Even if I could keep the money, it'd be wasted on me anyway," Bacall sighed. 

Savar was juggling angry Vulcan rage under trying to be civil. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOUR CULTURE?!

"By the time I used the capital to DO anything, I'd be too pregnant to move." 

Oh dear we're compatible aren't we, Savar thought. "Do you -want- to be pregnant?" 

Bacall sat back on the log like that question hit her with a wind gust. "What?" she squeaked, blinking. "Do I -want-... there's other options?!" 

"The first aid kit has levonorgestrel, misoprostol, mifepristone, copper..." Savar turned it over in his hands, found the latch, and carefully dumped the pill options on his lap. "Given where in the Universe your planet is, probably the hebenatrel first. Probably. If we had a working tricorder, I'd want to see if the levonorgestrel is something that works on your species. The copper hopefully works, but I would leave to a doctor if we had one." 

"You can DO that?!" Bacall stood up, staring at them. "Just DECIDE not to be pregnant?!" 

"Yes...?" 

Bacall sat back down on the log. "But it has a chance of being a Man... You'd LET me?!" 

"It's not up to..." Satiate the anger, do not react in anger at her culture that won't do any good. "If you don't want to be pregnant I'm not going to make you be pregnant!" 

I'm also not sure I even want to know what a half-orange kid looks like. What -I- wanted was a nice cute Me-and-T'Bay baby and hopefully her cute super-pointy ears. That's what -I- wanted. 

"If you -want- to keep the pregnancy--" Savar started. 

"I DON'T EVER WANT TO BE PREGNANT AGAIN!" Bacall yelled, then curled up in a very small ball, horrified she had An Opinion at all. "Er." 

Savar stood up, went over to the ship and dug around for a tricorder to see which particular hormone her species had, and handed her a nice little yellow hebenatrel tablet. "If this doesn't 'take', the misoprostol and mifepristone will work."

"You'd LET me??" she squeaked again. "I can PICK?!" 

"Yes...?" 

She glomped him. "THANK YOU MASTER!" 

This definitely was not your culture's term for Captain. 

Savar pried her off and sat down on the log next to her. "I have a name, my name's Savar..." We've already blown her brain with the colloquially named "Plan B" let's not speed it up any more than I have to! 

She downed the tablet with nothing to swallow, then looked up at him. "Other cultures don't Chew, do they?" 

Chew sounded very symbolic. Savar tugged the edge of the aluminum packet toward himself. "We eat our food -separately-, yes. Do you..." he looked her up and down. "When I asked 'where'd your shoes go', you seemed -angry- with me. What brought that on?" 

She nommed on her own packet of food like she was starving which she kind of looked like she was. "I thought you were mocking me." 

Resist the urge to facepalm, resist the urge to facepalm, resist the urge to facepalm. "Does your culture even... -do- clothes on half the population?" 

"No. It's not appropriate." 

"What about rainstorms?!" 

"It's always raining." 

Savar wasn't even sure where to go after that. What kind of climate do you even HAVE? "Do you -want- clothes? There were scrubs, winter-garb, and emergency clothes by the first aid kit... built for Lurians..." 

"I have no idea what that even feels like."

"Do you have -blankets- back home?" 

"When I was growing up. Bok..." She looked over at the crashed Cupaap like she was kind of glad it was crashed. "Not so much." 

"It's like wearing a blanket. Sheet. Thin blanket. Unless it's cold." 

The Lurian scrubs fit like a toga and she scratched enough Savar checked her for allergies to it. She wasn't allergic, just not used to it. 

"When we get out of here, we're going to have a LOT to figure out." 

But they didn't get out of there. 

They stayed and stayed and stayed and no one came and no one came some more and out there, the Dominion War happened and they stayed and stayed and stayed some more. 

Years went by. 

Bacall taught Savar the Rules of Acquisition. Savar was horrified. 

Savar taught Bacall Surak Philosophies. Bacall was a little less horrified. 

Bacall taught Savar Ferengi history. Odd, low-war, weirdly peaceful, but rigid and disturbing. 

Savar taught Bacall Vulcan history. Most of it. 

They sent out a radio signal, nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing. 

Savar got worried, "I get Pon Farr every seven years," he said. "I'm not -me- when I have Pon Farr. I'm something else, not there mentally, not able to control anything." 

And watching Bacall, she was decidedly not "into it". Given her personality and previous life, she'd do it for him, she even said she would, while staring at the floor and reverting back into her former recited, hidden, lonely self. 

Savar walked off as the drive of Pon Farr hit. 

It was a desert, kind of, a weird desert. Everything was burnable except the purple wood, do not burn the purple wood, and sometimes people in Kas'Wan had enough on their plate that nothing too terrible would kick in. Sometimes. 

He sort of hoped he'd get attacked by a ""bear"" that wasn't anything much like a bear at all, just to have the adrenaline to have violence to flush the Pon Farr out. 

Maybe. 

Hopefully. 

At their camp, settlement, graveyard for the poor little Lurian captain and yes they'd buried Bok even though she kinda wanted to let him rot... Bacall figured out Savar'd left and freaked out. 

But beyond that, another bit clicked in. 

She was -on her own-. By herself. 

No commands. 

No commands -at all- from anyone. Even with Savar there, she'd defaulted to following him. Giving ideas when prodded. 

Now there were no commands. 

At all. 

Totally, oddly, bizarrely -free-. 

And with that kicked in, she wasn't competing, nothing to fight against, just her, her mind, her thoughts, on her own. 

She got what she wanted sexually. Savar had straight up left, likely to get himself killed in more ways than one for that. 

What Savar wanted was T'Bay. 

Listening to him talk about T'Bay, they sounded like total fantasy, somehow existing in an impossible combination of work duties, love duties, political duties, and zero profit as a concept anywhere. He called her "his" at first, but had stopped because Bacall... Bacall'd took it to mean slavery. 

Now, standing up on their little ridge, looking out over the big lake that had turned out to be undrinkably alkaline; they got their water from a running stream earlier in the water cycle... 

...Ferengi weren't "smarter!" or "dumber!" than other species. Just -different- mentally. Unable to mind-meld. Unable to do telepathy. "Protected". What she called normal, Savar'd called "clever" a few times. 

But she'd always let him lead. 

Always 

let

him

lead. 

Even when he wasn't sure what he was doing with it. 

Now she was by herself. Alone, completely alone. 

She'd had about four ideas for "how to fix the radio" but since any of those four could also BREAK the radio, and living with Bok and everyone else back home, there was no way she'd be responsible for breaking something with Savar there to be mad at her over it--

\--now it didn't matter. 

IF it broke, the area sometimes had light earthquakes, she'd blame it on "op, while you were in Pon Farr, we had a bigger-than-normal earthquake IT'S NOT MY FAULT ididn'tdoanything" 

If it did work, well, then it'd WORK. 

She'd read the whole manual for the radio on the data pad. It wanted a specific wire connection that had snapped. Savar'd tried all kinds of little things throughout the ship. Bacall noticed that maybe--maybe!--instead of replacing the wire connection, the whole part the wire had been a part OF could be replaced by something from the Lurian's old entertainment headset. But that involved breaking the radio. BREAKING it and she didn't want to get beaten. Even though maybe Savar wouldn't maybe hopefully.

If that didn't work, there was also taking the top half of the radio off and hooking it sideways to the lightbeacon and using Bok's old wristband battery. Which was a LOT of spare parts and she didn't want to get beaten. 

It hadn't been a priority until now. 

Now it was a priority. 

And it worked on the first go. 

Unhook not just the wire-connect, but the wire-connect and the frame base, hook in the other one.

*radio static*

The translator--"stolen" from Bok before Savar'd buried him, Savar didn't know--took a bit to kick in. 

"--having a bit of a food fight down here, might want to send somebody to either pitch in and help me peacefully calm them down, or pitch the mashed potatoes for the Science Team. So far, Security's winning." Some man's voice. 

"Who thought putting Herman in charge of the kitchen was a good idea?!"

"Help??" Bacall squeaked. She'd -read- the manual but right now all the little official codes, that hadn't been the part of the manual that was interesting, what'd been interesting was how to FIX it. 

Something beeped. "Who is this?" They didn't sound threatening, more confused. "Cheshei is that you? Just REPLICATE more muffins!"

"No I'm on a planet the plants are blue the sky is green, sun is green, not sky, the sky is kinda whitish. There's me and a guy he's on Pon Farr over there, I think he walked off. There's a lake it tastes like dirt..." The more she talked the stupider she felt until she quieter and quieter and stopped talking mid-word. 

"I'm losing you! Don't go away!" The guy who'd said "Who is this" yelled. "WERE YOU ON THE CUPAAP?!" 

"I DIDN'T CRASH IT!! It wasn't my fault!" Bacall was crying, that was a stupid thing to say and she wasn't supposed to be talking to them anyway this was way too many rules broken.

She pulled her shirt over her head and tossed it on the floor to feel more Normal again. 

"We... what? Just keep signaling, we're on our way." 

They were on their way. 

DON'T WANNA GO HOME DON'T WANNA GO HOME DON'T WANNA GO HOME DON'T WANNA GO HOME! 

"Just find him and that's all." Bacall said. "Over by the lake?!"

Fifteen minutes later, there was twinkling and an eerie female voice boomed, "WAAAAANT!" 

And someone that could only be T'Bay tackled Bacall and pinned her to the ground. Men raping her had been Bacall's normal. Complaining to her Moogie got her smacked for ignoring good money. She'd learned them. 

Women?

This was new and desperate and confusing and -weird- and not going anywhere ad Bacall wasn't sure if she should curl up in a ball and scream, "act natural!" like her mother and Bok and Borey and everyone else back home had thought was normal, try to beat this extremely strong Vulcan woman off her, or crack up laughing. 

More twinkling. "T'BAY!" Somebody yelled and it was only once T'Bay'd been peeled off that Bacall realized that was Savar's voice extremely worn out and scratchy. 

"I NEEDED YOU!" T'Bay yelled in Savar's face. 

Savar yelled it back. He was filthy like he'd fallen down a rift in the dirt by the alkaline. T'Bay was in a uniform. Now they were both filthy. 

They made out, intensely, about as manic as thumbbirds. Actually wanting -each other- in their hyperdriven insane mode. 

Then things glittered and Bacall was under very bright lights. Yiping, she backed away and hit glass and fell over and the whole thing was awkward. 

"Are you okay?" said some voice. 

"Do you want a shirt?" said some other voice. 

"Is that a Ferengi?" said a voice. 

"I want a lawyer, I'm declaring refugee status, that's all I'm going to say!!" Bacall squeaked. It was what she and Savar'd figured out was probably going to work best if and when they ever were rescued. 

She got it all, and a badly needed therapist too.


End file.
